Finding Balance In Two Acts. (Reviews: National).

FINDING BALANCE IN TWO ACTS NANCY KARP + DANCERS/ DEBORAH SLATER DANCE THEATER ODC THEATER SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA SEPTEMBER 20-22, 2001

Nancy Karp and Deborah Slater brought more than forty years of combined experience and seven pieces to their shared modern program, "Counter Balance"; enough, theoretically, to please all of the viewers at least some of the time. Karp gave us plain movement, shaped by mathematical patterns and international accents; Slater introduced us to characters, aided by a liberal use of text. By juxtaposing older repertory works with a premiere, these veteran Bay Area-based dancemakers offered some sense of their artistic development.

Karp, whose worldly outlook has yielded pieces influenced by Indian kathakali dance and Germany's infamous Kristallnacht, opened the bill with Sweet Bargain, a 1992 solo inspired by Tokyo fish-mongers. To the sound of clanging bells and the bark of Japanese merchants, Karp moved meditatively, her gestures fluttery and quick, as if counting change. Her Relay Relay (1982) was similarly stripped down: Four men ran rhythmic circles around the stage, bringing their feet down heavily and flinging their arms upward every eight counts or so. As the piece progressed (which took longer than fidgeting viewers hinted it should) the men's increasingly heavy breathing augmented the counts. Accompanied by Bill Fontana's playground-sound score, the men's sweeping circles constricted into a nucleus, then unwound into intersecting diagonals and staggered lines. The precision of these patterns suggested the social regimentation of children's games and military exercises.

Il Mercato, Karp's world premiere, fared less well. The Italian marketplaces which Karp credited as source material were abstracted to the point of unrecognizability; the piece evoked nothing so much as an American modem-dance piece, and a fairly academic one at that. Despite the best efforts of Karp's collaborating dancers--self-assured in their angular turns, floor-skimming jumps, and other standard vocabulary--the piece lacked a certain human warmth. The tempo hardly varied, and there was little pedestrian movement or gestural language suggesting the interaction of people. Charles Amirkhanian's score, a headache-inducing electronic treatment of player-piano rolls, sounded warped.

Slater provided some welcome comedy with her 1988 solo 45 Seconds (+ 10 Years). Wearing a suit and heels, she strode briskly to the center and transformed herself into an aerobics drill sergeant, delivering a maniacal pep talk ("And breeeeeaaaaathhhe!") as she bobbed and stretched. By contrast, her 1984 "Table Solo" from Future Memories, performed by Jennifer Kesler, mesmerized with its quiet purposefulness. Kesler--part contortionist, part yogi--was strong and supple as she unfurled into a headstand atop a small slanted table, creating as much interest in stillness and balance as movement.

Two women danced, but several female characters emerged in Slater's Grace Floats (1998) and Out of Disguise (1984). Grace referred to a fishing village widow whose husband, we gather from the text (Slater's collaboration with Rinde Eckert), was drowned at sea. Though dancer Kerry Gaither Mehling spoke her lines in a nebulous accent and the music has not aged well, there were memorable moments: Grace scattered potatoes across the floor, fretted about encroaching winter weather, dreamt restlessly of Africa, and slid fishing floats strung against the wall back and forth with a pole, as if marking time with an oversized abacus.

Like Grace, the three women of Disguise were distressed, unsure of what to do with themselves. Slater's voiceover described an older woman who publicly loses bladder control, a professional escort, and a potential suicide, as Deborah Miller danced the same combination on three chairs set along a diagonal. A series of slow extensions, fetal positions, and slides off, over, and under the chairs suggested a need to find balance and comfort, and felt right.